First Sight
by Wicked Enough
Summary: /OneShot/SasuSaku/ Blindness is a curse. Love is a blessing. And all he can do is sit in his cell, regretting.


**First Sight**

One-Shot

_Disclaimer_: I do not own any part of Naruto.

Author's Note:

Written for **Simply Love's Winter 2005 Official Fanart/Fanfiction Contest**. The theme was "First", as in First Kiss, or First Love, etc. I choose **First Sight**... Enjoy!

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What is the color of darkness?

It's not black, nor is it ebony or gray. It's moving–it's alive, but it's not a color. The shades that make it so mysteriously frightening, so innately feared, are still unknown to him.

What is the color of darkness?

He wonders it now, in the dead of the night, as his heart beats slowly. Each thump damns him, because even now, he is living sin.

He knows that because this is the reason he is still living–so he could continue remembering, feeling, for all the times he could have that he didn't, because he had been too foolish, too stubborn, too broken to see what had been in front of him.

His dreams had only been nightmares, his ideals only curses.

How was he supposed to know that? A child forced to grow up too fast, never to have seen a set of wooden kunai? How was he supposed to know maturity was twisted with age, and experience with knowledge?

Sasuke the boy was assassinated the day he witnessed his first corpse.

He wishes that boy hadn't been killed, sometimes. But that sometimes is only in the dark, when he is haunted by what he hopes isn't real–the screams in his ears, the blood on his hands.

His memory weaves through his head like fog, blocking him from seeing what is real but keeping him in the past. His family. His brother. His destiny.

He was meant to betrayal them all in the end, wasn't he? He was Uchiha Sasuke. The boy born with a demon already inside him. And that makes him smile, still, because it reminds him of his comrades, his... friends.

The loud-mouth brat who turned out to be the blessing of the village, saving everyone, including himself! Inn the beginning, he had just ignored the fool, dismissing him as fodder for future missions. Now he was only here because _The Sixth_ granted him temporary life! How irony had played her role!

And, of course, that girl who had always chased after him. Sakura, Sakura, just like her name. Feminine and weak, so easy to crush. But that had been then.

His brow furrowed as that other memory came, climbing from the grave he had so eagerly dug in order to forget.

Her shorn hair, messily pulled back with her hair ribbon, the Kohona hitai-ate shining proudly in the sunset as she fought to reach him. The jagged stream of blood just millimeters from flowing into her eye and the metal kunai handle clutched between her teeth. She looked like a warrior–and all he had been able to think about was, What happened to the little girl who used to beg him for a date?

It was strange and made him wonder if she had assassinated Sakura the girl as he assassinated Sasuke the boy.

A dry, humorless chuckle tried to escape his throat and failed. Perhaps they were more alike than he had ever thought. Or maybe he was just going insane.

He breathed in deep to keep himself under control once again. And began to remember.

She had screamed when she saw him in his cursed seal form that first time. Screamed and he could just feel the tears starting to course down her cheeks. She had thought him dead, and cared enough to weep.

Idiot girl. She didn't even know the truth about him.

Later, years later, when his vision had started to fail, he realized that he had never truly seen her. He hadn't thought it a loss until now because he had never really cared. What was a girl to the dozens he had already killed?

Female affection wasn't a stranger to him. After all, wasn't he once the most sought after male? He cared naught for its attachments.

That was when he actually felt something from the kiss she tentatively laid on his lips, he was surprised to feel... warm. Warmth wasn't something he had felt since a child.

But that fire had burned to ashes when he heard the steady drip-drip of blood hitting dry dirt. And when he opened his eyes, he could no longer see.

He could hear her gasping for air, trying to live, trying to fight against the ever-nearing death that seemed to have already claimed his soul, but... He was already blind.

He slumped against his chains, allowing his weight to fall onto his wrists, still shackled to those chakra-sucking chains they had put on him.

Yes, Naruto was his friend enough to allow him a trial where surely he would be condemned as guilty, but that was all kindness he would grant. Nothing, not even the tears of _her_, would ever cure his eyes.

All he could do now was sit in his cell, remembering her, and lamenting the fact that he had lost an opportunity of first sight.


End file.
